Our nation faces two very basic questions today.
These are two questions that every generation must ask itself, and then, in turn, pass along its answers to those who follow.
First, who are we as Americans today? And, second, what kind of nation do we aspire to leave for our children?
How we answer those two questions is how our generation will be remembered.
Now, we answer those questions not so much with our vote in a single election campaign nor in the crucible of a single life decision; we answer those fundamental questions with the ongoing fabric of our votes and actions throughout our entire political lives. American history has shown, time and again, that the collective choices individual citizens have made in answer to those two questions...about who we are as Americans and what we aspire for our country...have shaped the history of our nation and the fabric of our national life.
These two questions weigh no less and no more today than they have at any other point in our history, and yet so much rests upon the balance of our replies...
As individuals, we shape our biographies, but as Americans, our nation's history shapes us.
The two things are inter-twined. And that's true for all of us.
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For myself, my story is shaped by the fact that my mother, a northerner, went to High School in Temple Texas in the 1950's and experienced racial segregation (from the white point of view) first hand. My story is shaped by the fact that my father was the seventh child in a farming family born during the Great Depression and who grew up without wealth, electricity or running water and who can say, matter of factly, about that era, "either you knew what a lard sandwich tastes like, or you didn't, but either way, it was rough." My story is shaped by my one living grandparent, Blanche, who is 95 years old and whose recounting of her experience of the Great Depression sitting at a picnic table one Fourth of July seared my memory and inspired a post about Social Security here on DailyKos.
You have such stories, too. Stories like that shape our biographies, who we are. These stories make up, collectively, our national history. I hope you feel free to share.
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Our history, however, is also long. And my story is a part of that, too.
My story is also that of Jan, one of my Czech maternal grandfathers, who worked on steamboats up and down the Mississippi and saw slavery firsthand. My story is that of another Jan (those creative Czech immigrants!) who fought under Sherman in a Wisconsin regiment in the Civil War known as the 'Abolition Regiment' because they refused to return Blacks they found to slavery and instead recruited them to the Union cause. My story is that of my paternal grandfather James, who sold pies as a young Irish immigrant along the Erie Canal. My story is also that of Mamie Cronin, a "Minnesota pioneer," born in Ireland in the 1790s, mother to an out-of-wedlock child, and whose photo, in a fractured dagguerrotype, stares at me across gulfs of our national history.
These are people who make up who I am. In that, I'm no different than you, whether your parents are from another land or lived here long before my family arrived. My biography is intertwined with yours, in our common American history.
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We Americans are a nation of laws; we are one people united by a Constitution that is the noblest document yet composed and a living testament to our core philosophy of equality and government of the people and by the people. We live in a Democracy that is the longest continuous democratic government on Earth. Our Declaration of Independence is the founding statement of purpose, not simply of our nation, but of the modern era.
Our history is also complex.
The Declaration of Independence included a clause judgmental of slavery that was removed. Our Constitution reflected long and arduous work that still preserved slavery and counted some Americans, who could not vote and who were owned by others, as 3/5ths of a human being. The Dred Scott decision, which every law student in this nation must study and argue and analyze to this day, speaks baldly of the institution of slavery:
The only relevant question, therefore, was whether, at the time the Constitution was ratified, Scott could have been considered a citizen of any state within the meaning of Article III. According to the Court, the drafters of the Constitution had viewed all African-Americans as
"beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
The Court also presented a parade of horribles, describing the feared results of granting Mr. Scott's petition:
"It would give to persons of the negro race, ...the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, ...the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went."
Women's suffrage was only granted in 1920. There are women alive today who voted that year, and my grandmother, Mary, born in 1894 and who died in 1978, was one of them. My grandmother Blanche, who worked as a servant in St. Paul while she took business classes in Minneapolis, was a beneficiary of this movement, a young woman who could shape her life and move to a big city from a rural town in search of a job if she so choose.
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We shape our biographies, but our lives are shaped by our shared history.
Who are we as Americans? That's a question all of us have to answer this year. There is no easy reply.
What kind of nation do we want to leave for our children? That is a question that every generation has asked, and their answers, for better or for worse, have shaped who we are.
I know my personal experience has taught me, deeply, that being white in America means an incredible privilege. But that being said, I also remember the poverty of some of my white neighbors growing up in the 1970s. When I visited the homes of my friends Donald and Darryl and Gabe I learned that things like televisions and carpeting and stereos were luxuries that my parents could afford and others could not.
I also know, unlike many white Americans, what it's like to be a minority. I was one of two white boys on my block. For much of my childhood I played and wrestled and debated and talked with friends who were African-American. Ray-Ray and James and Quincy and Eric and Shannon and Nick and Aaron and Scooter and Tristan and Mike and Roger and Jason. I can tell you that the generosity, material and immaterial, I felt growing up from my Black friends is unparalleled in my life, even to this day.
Now, some of those friends have not made it. Some of them are in prison and have been since soon after we graduated from High School. Some of them, are, like me, looking at turning 40 in a new century with new promise and new hopes. But everything I have ever written here on DailyKos is shaped by that "founding fact" of my life, of my story. While I glided from grade school to high school to Columbia University, my childhood friends did not. And the most brutal years were those right around grades six and seven and eight. Those were the years when America starts to send a message to young Black men about what the rules of the game really are and what "equality" means in America.
I saw that up close. And, yes, that reality is a part of my story and our collective history, too.
Now, my dad was a history professor with a degree from Yale. My track to an Ivy League education was virtually assured from the day I was born. But my biography is shaped by choices my parents made and by that historical moment in the 1970s, when just as "white flight" reached its peak, some families, Black and white and Latino, stayed and tried to build on Martin Luther King's dream in communities across the USA.
Everything in my life, in my biography is somehow shaped by that founding fact.
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Who are we as Americans?
What kind of nation do we want to leave for our children?
These are questions that our nation asks us to this day. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I am very sure that if there is any American value that is paramount it is this one: All men are created equal.
My view, is simply one person's view. My story, is simply one American's biography, shaped by a history that we all share. Many here know my political views and preferences and if I have a closing thought it would be this: I am utterly convinced that it is only through a politics that renews our fundamental commitments as a nation, to equity and equality, to free speech and religious tolerance, to a public education and the right to vote, that any of us will achieve the dream of which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke.
I am literally a child of 1968. My childhood friends and classmates were as well. I will never forget a moment in 8th grade when my friend Coretta was introduced to Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, the woman after whom she was named. There was not a dry eye to be seen at that moment. But for Mrs. King, that kind of thing happened all the time all over the United States.
I also remember what Mrs. King talked about that day at the University of Minnesota. Mrs. King spoke of the work of her husband on civil rights, she spoke of the importance of non-violence as a political philosophy and the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and she spoke about racial equality and her husband's dream for our nation. If that dream is to be realized it must work and have real, pragmatic meaning for every last American, whatever their background.
We are equal, we are one people, we are bound together by our history and our ideals.
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Who are we as Americans?
And what kind of nation do we want to leave for our children?
That's the question we are asked today. It's not a partisan question. It's a question that all of us will answer with our choices, our lives, and the fabric of our votes. In this regard, each of our individual biographies, collectively, will become a part of our nation's history.
The choice is ours. And it always has been.
If anything, that is the eternal beauty and challenge of what it means to be an American. That is our heritage and our hope.
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Please feel free to share your story and/or your thoughts below.